Childhood Remembrance
by Alex Damien
Summary: A cake flavor takes Camus back to the first time he met Milo


Childhood Remembrance

It was the hushed voices that woke up Camus. A couple crashing plates, or loudly tripping over a pile of laundry left on the floor were nothing new to him now. But the shuffling quietly around, and the hushed whispers made him open his eyes at once. He furrowed his brow, unmoving from the bed, and noticed there were a lot of people in the house of Aquarius. That in itself raised some warning flags in his mind. But he did not move, because among the voices he could hear Milo's.

"But he hates blueberry! How do you not know?" whispered Milo.

"Well, it's not like he mentioned that during training! We never talked of our favorite cake flavors!" whispered Hyoga back.

Camus thought back to the last time he had eaten a blueberry and he couldn't really remember. It might have been years…It might have been decades…

He thought further back, to his first days at the sanctuary. Everything had looked so grand, only because he had been so small.

And hot. The heat the first days had been nearly unbearable. He had refused to wear a tunic like the others, and trained in his usual shirt. Mostly alone, because the noise was almost as unbearable as the heat. Everything had been so much… _more_ in the sanctuary. There were more people, more buildings, more scorching heat…more children… He hated the other children. They pointed at him and laughed. They spied on him from the bushes… Like the time he had met Milo. He had been observing him for a while. For days he had felt the heaviness of his stare on him until he couldn't stand it anymore.

He turned towards the bush and froze it. A boy roughly his own age jumped out.

"Milo," Camus had said. "Stop spying on me."

Milo stood up. Back then, Camus had been surprised at how piercing his eyes had been. How it felt like there was a strange darkness pulling him in when he looked at them.

"How do you know my name?" Milo had asked with a smirk, walking towards him. Camus took a step back away from him. And another, and another, until he hit a wall behind him. Milo kept walking, until he was only a half step away. And how was it that his eyes seemed so much darker up close? How was his stare so much heavier, making Camus feel like there was a weight pressing in his chest. "Tell me! How do you know my name?"

Camus pushed him away. "I asked my master. I saw you spying on me these last days. Stop it!" cried Camus.

"I wasn't spying!" said Milo, and stuck his tongue out at him. "I wanted to invite you to pick berries, but you're dumb!"

"Pick berries?" asked Camus.

Milo's expression turned happy again, and he grabbed Camus' wrist. "They're over here! Come!" he said.

Camus let himself be pulled along. Milo led him to a small clearing at the far edges of the training grounds, where there were strewn about a bunch of different bushes with berries. Milo rummaged on the nearest one and presented a handful of raspberries to Camus.

"Look! They're delicious!" he said, handing the berries to Camus and staring at him intently.

Camus didn't move.

"You don't like them?" asked Milo.

"They're pretty..." muttered Camus, unsure of what to say.

"No! I mean, don't you like to eat them?"

"You eat them?"

Milo laughed, and his laugh seemed to Milo to possess a light of its own. It echoed around the empty spaced around them, and the day seemed brighter at once. But when Milo opened his eyes again, there once more the darkness called to him, drawing him in and making his heart race.

Milo picked a raspberry and stuffed it in his mouth, chewing loudly. Camus frowned at him and put a finger to Milo's lips. Milo froze immediately, his cheeks turning pink.

"Don't make noise while you chew. That's rude," said Camus, and took away his finger. Milo swallowed. "Y-your fingers are cold," he said with half-hearted anger.

Camus didn't reply, instead grabbed a raspberry and put it in his mouth. The tangy yet sweet taste in his mouth surprised him, so he tried another one. Milo grinned at him.

"There are lots more!" he said, grabbing Camus' wrist once more and leading him to a blueberry bush. Camus grabbed a couple and put them in his mouth at once. The taste was too sharp, too acid, and he regretted them. He made a face, caught between not wanting to swallow them, yet not daring to spit them out.

"You didn't like them?" asked Milo, seeing his face of disgust. He looked sad, confused. It seemed like a strange look in his face for some reason that Camus couldn't understand. He decided that he didn't like to see that expression in Milo's face.

The berries were still not to Camus' taste, but he decided to just get it over with and he swallowed them.

"I think I only like the red ones," said Camus.

The sadness vanished from Milo's face, and he grinned again.

"But there are also black ones, come!" he said, and this time Camus held up his wrist so Milo could grab it. He now trusted that Milo would take him too good places with berries and light and the scent of dew in the air.

And now when Milo showed him strawberries and blackberries, the darkness from his eyes seemed warmer and welcoming.

So that had been how Milo knew he didn't like blueberries. Even Camus had almost forgotten at this point. But the memory still made him smile.

The door knob turned and he closed his eyes, pretending to be asleep.

Milo slipped inside the room, closing the door softly behind him. From the other side of the door, he could hear Isaak's voice whispering.

"Seriously? We have to change the damn cake? It's just blueberries!"

"We don't have to change it. Let's just get another one and have two," whispered Shun.

"I told you all this one was a bad idea," said Ikki, barely bothering to whisper.

Milo sat on the edge of the bed and combed back Camus' hair with his fingers.

"Open your eyes birthday boy, I know you're awake," he said.

Camus opened his eyes and saw Milo smiling down at him. He noticed the dark edge to his eyes was still there, even after these many years. Camus had simply grown so used to seeing it there that he had stopped noticing it.

"Tell them the cake is fine," he said, grabbing Milo's hand and pulling it away from his hair so he could kiss the tip of his fingers.

"You're going to hate it," said Milo. His cheeks coloring a soft tinge of pink, just like they had that day, when they'd met.

"Maybe," said Camus, who hadn't tasted a single blueberry in over twenty years.

Milo caressed the side of Camus' face, then leaned down to rub the tip of their noses together. Camus used the chance to grab Milo's waist and pull him down on the bed with him.

"They made breakfast too," said Milo, as a warning for Camus not to start anything, yet throwing his arms around Camus' neck.

"I know. I can smell it burning," said Camus, and rubbed their noses together again.

Milo laughed.

Camus breathed deeply and looked at Milo's smiling face. He could still recognize in him the same boy he'd met that day.

"Remember when we met?" asked Camus.

Milo pinched Camus' nose. "Is your old age making you nostalgic now grandpa?"

"I was just wondering why you spent three days stalking me while I trained."

Milo's cheeks turned from pink to red.

"It was two days! And I wasn't stalking you! I was just curious...," he said, and traced a finger down Camus' chest. "I had heard of you from my master, and I'd seen you from afar... I guess you looked pretty cool, so I wanted to talk to you. And then you tried to kill me!"

Camus laughed. "Good thing I failed," he said, pulling Milo closer.

Good thing he'd failed then, and all the times when he stupidly pushed away the best person in his life. Good thing that despite all his mistakes they had still arrived to this point in life. Together.

A/N: I hope you've liked this. I'm not very good at writing children, so it took quite an effort from me to write this. Still, I'm quite pleased with how it came out.

All the references to Milo's eyes having a certain darkness to them are because despite me viewing him as someone pretty upbeat and having a sort of sunny disposition, I also wanted to draw on certain associations with the 8th House (the scorpio house) which is said to be a dark house of secrets and the occult. Trying to weave those associations with the way I portray Milo is something I've been thinking of for a while and this was one of my first tries. I hope it wasn't too odd. Please let me know what you think!


End file.
